The Key (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 8)

by Patricia Wentworth

  He emerged from his room upon a well blacked-out passage and switched on the light at the head of the stairs. He had no mind to rouse the household and provide Bourne with another inquest by taking a header into the stone-flagged hall. The light came on, imparting a raffish air to its respectable surroundings. After the early morning sunlight this synthetic product was all wrong, all out of key. It gave the sedate Rectory stair a horrid up-all-night appearance.

  He was nearly at the bottom, when something sparkled at him from the heavily patterned carpet. He bent, and pricked his finger on a sliver of glass. As he dropped it into the wastepaper basket in the study he wondered vaguely who had been breaking what. Then he let himself out by the glass door, and was pleased to observe that his hand had lost neither its cunning nor its steadiness. There was no creak of the hinge for him. He stepped on to the dew-drenched lawn and looked down the garden, as he had looked from his bedroom window in the night. It was the same scene, but whereas then everything had been dreaming under the moon, now it was all enchantingly awake, the border jewel bright, the old wall behind it warm and mossy in the early sunshine. Away to the left the shadows lay across the grass, but now it was the sun that laid them there, and the trees themselves were full of colour and light – the cedar with its cones like a flock of little owls sitting all in rows on the great layered branches, the thorn almost as red with berries as in its blooming time. That was where he had first caught sight of Miss Brown last night – not as Miss Brown, but as something that moved in the shadow of the thorn.

  He crossed the garden until he came to the place, and stood there frowning. Perhaps Miss Brown had been unable to sleep – perhaps she had come out to take the air. The answer to that was that he didn’t think so. They had gone to their rooms at ten o’clock. If Miss Brown had made any effort to sleep, she would not still have been wearing a black lace dinner-dress at half-past twelve.

  Two or three yards beyond the thorn tree the grey wall at the foot of the garden broke into an arch filled by a door of weathered oak. He lifted the latch, swung the door inwards, and walked out into the narrow Cut which ran at the back of all these houses facing on to the green. It had on one side of it a long, continuous wall which joined one wall of the churchyard at right angles about twenty feet farther on, and on the other a tall mixed hedge. Between wall and hedge there was just room for two people to walk abreast, or for a boy to ride a bicycle. It was in fact chiefly used by errand boys, who found it a short cut. On the right it skirted the churchyard and came out in the middle of the village. On the left it followed the wall until it ended, and then wandered out to join the road which bordered the Green. Five houses shared the wall. Each had a door which gave upon the Cut.

  Perhaps Miss Brown had gone out of one door and in at another. Perhaps she had been to call upon one of her neighbours. Thanks to Miss Sophy’s flow of conversation he could name them all – Mr Everton, the retired businessman and poultry expert, in Meadowcroft; the new rector, in The Lilacs instead of Miss Jones; the Miss Doncasters next door in Pennycott; Mrs Mottram in The Haven; and Dr Edwards and his wife at Oak Cottage. Not at all a probable lot, with the exception of Mr Everton, who might for all he knew be in the habit of sitting up till midnight and making assignations with gloomy ladies in evening dress. Hang it all, you couldn’t have much of an assignation inside of ten minutes, which was really all you could give it, allowing for crossing the garden twice. There certainly wasn’t more than a quarter of an hour between the creak that had woken him up and the creak that had signalled Miss Brown’s return.

  He moved a step or two, and for the second time his eye was caught by something glinting under the light. This time he had no need to prick his finger. The sun slanted across the hedge and dazzled upon broken glass – quite a lot of it. Nothing in the least mysterious about how it came there. Quite obviously the milk boy had been careless and let a bottle fall. The base had rolled under the hedge and was still sticky with milk.

  Garth looked at the splinters on the ground, and thought about the splinter on the Rectory stair. He thought Miss Brown had picked it up on the hem of her black lace skirt and dropped it again as the lace dipped and brushed the carpet on her way upstairs.

  Well, it wasn’t really his business – or wouldn’t have been if it were not for Aunt Sophy. As it was, it gave him a feeling of insecurity. He didn’t like the way in which the old dear had come by Miss Medora Brown. Coffee grounds and cards are not really a substitute for first-class references. He wondered to what extent Aunt Sophy had been carried away, and whether she had considered the question of references at all.

  He walked slowly past the back door into Meadowcroft, and wondered whether Miss Brown had passed through it last night. When he reached the boundary wall of The Lilacs he turned back again.

  He was within a couple of yards of the open Rectory door, and had paused for another look at the litter of glass, when without any warning a voice went off in his ear.

  ‘Coo! That’s a smash!’ it said. ‘Not ’arf!’

  Swinging round, he found himself looking down at a leggy boy of twelve, his grey flannel shorts half way up his thighs, and his sleeves half way up to the elbow. He might have been stretched, or the clothes might have shrunk. How much longer they would hold together was conjectural.

  ‘Hello!’ said Garth. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Cyril Bond. I’m a ’vacuee. That’s my billet.’ He jerked an elbow in the direction of Meadowcroft, and added, ‘Got hens in there, we have. They don’t ’arf lay. I get a negg for my breakfast twice a week, I do.’

  ‘And you made this horrible mess?’

  ‘Naow!’ The shrill tone was scornful. ‘That’s a milk bottle, that is. I don’t like the milk round. That’s Tommy Pincott’s doing, that is. He done it yesterdye. He’s fourteen and left school. He works for his uncle, and I reckon he’ll cop it from him.’

  Garth stepped over the glass and went in through the Rectory door. The shrill voice followed him.

  ‘You’re stying in there? Your nyme’s Albany? Come last night, didn’t you?’

  ‘You seem to know all about it.’

  ‘Course I do!’

  The boy’s face brightened. He had fair hair, grey eyes, a fresh colour, and a deceptive appearance of cleanliness. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the church.

  ‘There was a man shot in there a coupler days ago – right in the church. There’s going to be a ninquest todye and none of us boys won’t be let go to it. Coo – I’d like to go to a ninquest!’

  ‘Why?’

  The boy scuffed with his feet among the broken bits of glass.

  ‘I dunno. Miss Marsden, our teacher, she said any boy that went on talking about this gentleman that was shot, she’d keep him in. That’s what comes of having wimmen brought in to teach you. My dad doesn’t hold with it. He says they’ll all be too big for their boots after the war. D’you reckon that’s right?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Garth, laughing.

  He prepared to shut the door, but the boy came edging over the threshold.

  ‘Do you reckon the gentleman shot himself?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I reckon it’s a funny place to shoot yourself, don’t you – right in a church?’

  Garth nodded.

  Cyril kicked at a stone with the toe of a disintegrating shoe. His voice was shriller than ever. ‘Fancy going right into a dark church to shoot yourself, when you might do it comfortable at ’ome! It don’t seem likely – that’s wot I sye.’

  ‘Does anyone else say it?’

  Cyril kicked again. The stone went into the ditch.

  ‘I dunno. What do you reckon about it, mister?’

  ‘It’s out of my reckoning,’ said Garth in rather an odd tone of voice. Then he said, ‘Cut along now!’ and shut the door.

  SEVEN

  HE STROLLED INTO the churchyard after breakfast, and found Bush digging the grave which would be wanted tomorrow for Michael Har
sch. Frederick wore his usual air of conscientious gloom. He was a fine broad-shouldered man, and must have cut a personable figure in his footman days, but very few people had ever seen him smile. Some said it was just his gravedigger’s pride – ‘And say what you like, none of us wouldn’t fancy having jokes cracked over our coffins.’ Others said that if they had to live with Susannah Pincott and eat her cooking, maybe they wouldn’t smile either.

  Garth said, ‘Hello, Bush!’ and got a ‘Morning, Mr Garth,’ after which the digging proceeded.

  ‘You’re all well, I hope?’

  Bush lifted a heavy spadeful.

  ‘As well as anyone’s got the right to expect.’

  ‘I suppose this is for Mr Harsch?’ Garth indicated the grave.

  This time he only got a nod.

  ‘Did you know him? I suppose you did. Was he the sort of chap to commit suicide? Seems an odd place to do it in, the church.’

  Bush nodded again and threw out another spadeful. Then he said soberly, ‘I doubt there’s two kinds of chaps – anyone might do it if they was to be pushed hard enough.’

  ‘What makes you think that Mr Harsch was being pushed?’

  Bush straightened up.

  ‘Begging your pardon, I never said no such thing. Anyone might get pushed so as they couldn’t keep a hold of themselves. I seen a car run away down Penny Hill when I was a boy – something gone wrong with the brakes, they said – come an almighty smash against a big ellum in the hedge. I reckon that’s just about what happens when a chap takes his own life – brakes don’t work and he gets out of control same as a car.’ He bent to his digging again. There was no more to be got from him.

  The inquest was set for half-past eleven in the village hall. Garth walked down between Miss Sophy and Miss Brown, both wearing black. Miss Brown was silent, Miss Sophy tremulously conversational. She kept a hand on his arm, and clutched him hard as they entered.

  Rows of wooden chairs, a narrow aisle up the middle, a platform at the far end, an all-pervading smell of varnish. Memories of village concerts, private theatricals, and jumble sales crowded in upon Garth. To the right of that platform he had sat at the upright piano presented by Miss Doncaster and played his first solo, The Merry Peasant, with leaden fingers and a growing conviction that he was going to be sick. Behind the very table which occupied the centre of the stage his grandfather’s impressive figure had towered as he presented prizes to the more virtuous of the village youth. Where the narrow lane between the chairs now stretched tables groaning with buns had been set for the Christmas Sunday School treat. There was something rather horrid about revisiting the scene for an inquest. One thing there was in common between those past occasions and this gloomy one, the hall was full. Only the two front rows remained unoccupied, but they were farther removed from the platform then they would have been at a concert, and on the right-hand side of the space thus left clear a dozen chairs placed sideways in two rows accommodated nine embarrassed-looking men and three women.

  The coroner, who might have sat alone, had chosen to call a jury – half a dozen farmers; Mr Simmonds the butcher; the landlord of the Black Bull; the baker; Mrs Cripps of the general shop; Mrs Mottram, a pretty fair-haired woman with a rolling blue eye; and the elder of the two Miss Doncasters, Miss Lucy Ellen, very thin, upright and grey, with an air of considering that her gentility was being contaminated.

  On the left a couple of reporters and a small, efficient elderly man whose face Garth found familiar without being able to place it, until it came to him that he had seen it bent over papers in Sir George’s office. Obviously Sir George was not leaving the reporting of the evidence to chance.

  Miss Sophy had led the way to the second row of chairs upon the right. At the far end of the corresponding row on the left there sat a middle-aged gentleman in tweeds which would have looked better if they had not looked quite so new; for the rest a very genial gentleman, not so stout as to be called fat, but a well rounded testimonial to the efficiency of Lord Woolton’s food control. He had a bald patch on the top of his head, a pair of ruddy cheeks, and a roving eye. It lighted upon Miss Sophy, and he immediately beamed and bowed.

  Miss Sophy’s grip upon Garth’s arm tightened. She said ‘Mr Everton!’ in a fooffly whisper, and returned the bow with a hint of discreet reproof. She had never been to an inquest before, but it felt a good deal like being in church, and though it might be permissible to recognise your friends, she did not feel that it was at all the thing to smile at them. Mrs Mottram now – she really shouldn’t be looking about her like that. To be on a jury was a most responsible and sobering position, and she was wearing that rather bright blue dress which she had bought when she went out of mourning. And turquoise earrings – really most unsuitable, though no doubt very becoming. Lucy Ellen Doncaster looked most disapproving, and no wonder. She was wearing the coat and skirt in which she always attended funerals. It must be quite twenty years old, but it was suitable. Unfortunately her hat, of approximately the same date, had tipped sideways in spite of the two long jet-headed pins with which it was transfixed. But hatpins are of very little use unless you have plenty of hair, and Lucy Ellen, who had never had much, was now decidedly thin on the top. Even at this solemn moment Miss Sophy heaved a sigh of thankfulness at the thought of her own thick, snowy curls. ‘After all, there is nothing like a good head of hair,’ she concluded.

  The room, except for the two front rows, was now packed. All at once a party of three came up the central aisle – a man with an angry crooked face and black untidy hair, a woman in whom the same odd features were blurred by plumpness and timidity, and Janice Meade. Garth would have known her anywhere. She really hadn’t altered a bit, and she didn’t look very much older – the little pointed face, the way her hair grew, the very bright eyes. She followed the Madocs up to the second row on the left. Mr Madoc stood aside. Miss Madoc went forward in a hesitating manner and sat down by Mr Everton. Janice followed her. The professor jerked the outside chair as far as possible away from them, threw himself into it, and crossed his legs, right over left, after which he dragged a horrid-looking handkerchief from his pocket and mopped a brow which had every appearance of being heated by some inner conflagration.

  Garth got all this as an impression. He wasn’t really looking at Madoc. His eyes were on Janice, and he was thinking how nice and cool she looked in a white tennis frock and a sort of garden hat with a black ribbon round it, whilst Miss Madoc weltered in a heavy grey coat and skirt which dipped and bulged, and Madoc wore his aged flannel trousers, his open-necked shirt, and disreputable green jacket as if they had been forced upon him by the Gestapo.

  Garth’s attention came to him and remained. The man’s whole being was a protest. Waves of angry resentment spread out all round him in the most disconcerting manner. He appeared to Garth to be one of those unhappy persons to whom civilisation is at once abhorrent and necessary. As a scientist he required its order. As a man he rebelled, and detested its restraints.

  The coroner came in and took his seat to the ancient formula of ‘Oh yes – oh yes – oh yes!’ Immemorial ritual, immemorial routine, and the little grey man with ruffled hair and a lagging step. But the eyes behind his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses were steady and sharp. He called the medical evidence first. A hollow-cheeked elderly man recited it in a rapid undertone. Garth gathered that the bullet had entered the right temple, that death must have been instantaneous, that everything pointed to the weapon having been actually in contact with the head.

  Janice wreathed her hands together in her lap and tried not to listen. She kept telling herself that these things had nothing to do with Mr Harsch. He had been here, and he had been her friend, but now he wasn’t here, and she hoped he was with his daughter and his wife. All this about bullets, and weapons, and the violence that went with them had nothing to do with him at all.

  The police surgeon stood down, and a police inspector took his place. He had been called to Bourne church at 12.12 a.m. on Wednesday 9t
h September. The call was put through by the sexton, Frederick Bush. He found Bush and Miss Janice Meade in the church when he arrived. He also found the body of Mr Harsch, lying on the floor in front of the organ. The weapon lay close to his right hand. The attitude of the body was compatible with the shot having been fired whilst Mr Harsch was sitting at the keyboard. There was no disturbance, and no sign of a struggle. The organist’s bench had not been moved. The body appeared to have slipped from it to the ground.

  The moment which Janice had been dreading had arrived. She heard her name – ‘Call Janice Meade!’ She had to squeeze past Evan Madoc, who merely scowled and slewed himself a little sideways without uncrossing his legs. The thought that he was the rudest man in the world passed automatically through her mind. She went up the two steps on to the platform. When she had been sworn, someone gave her a chair and she sat down.

  ‘Now, Miss Meade – will you tell us in your own words just what happened on Tuesday evening. I believe you were Mr Harsch’s secretary?’

  ‘I am Mr Madoc’s secretary. I was very pleased to do anything I could for Mr Harsch.’

  ‘You have been an inmate of the same household – for how long?’

  ‘For a year.’

  ‘You were on friendly terms with Mr Harsch?’

  Her colour flew up, her eyes dazzled. She said, ‘Oh, yes— on a soft, unsteady breath.

  ‘Well, Miss Meade, will you tell us about Tuesday evening?’

  Garth, watching her, saw her right hand take hold of her left and hold it tightly. When she spoke her voice was low and clear.

  ‘Mr Harsch came in from his laboratory at a little before six. He had finished something that he had been working at for a long time. I gave him some tea, and we sat talking for a little. He put through a telephone call to London, and then we talked again.’

  ‘Was this call in connection with the work which he had finished?’